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Origin of Thor / Martian History 101
Contact between Earth and Mars goes back Millennia. The Martians are an older race than humanity, and had access to the technology necessary for interplanetary travel since before humans lived in cities. However, much of the impressive Martian technological package was not developed independently. Some 35,000 years ago, Kryptonian explorers arrived in the Solar System for the first time. Most Martian technology was fairly primitive at that time, but they did have one significant achievement: over their civilization's long history, Martians had bred themselves to possess incredible powers. All Martians were enormously long lived, capable of shape-shifting, and many possessed other abilities, from telepathy, to flight, to telekinesis, to incredible strength, to a suite of powers that Earthlings would generally just call magic. At this point in their history the Kryptonians were already fantastically advanced technology, but had not yet completed their great project of self-improvement. Fascinated by the Martian abilities, the Kryptonians offered to trade pieces of their advanced technology for a chance to study the Martians. This transaction proved immensely beneficial to both sides. The Kryptonians analyzed the Martian physiology, and (after a few experiments on the other inhabitants of the star system that would later prove consequential) learned how to not only duplicate, but ultimately improve on their abilities, eventually leading to the existence of ultra-powerful Kryptonians such as Super-Spider. The Martians for their part were given access to science far beyond anything they had mastered. While some of the devices they were given proved understandable and led to advances in the Martian understanding of the universe, for the most part they have remained incomprehensible or at least impossible to duplicate, all the way to the present day. This transfer led to the seeming paradox of modern Martian society: without a significant scientific tradition they are in most ways actually more primitive than modern Earth, but they possess certain devices, such as the Hammer of Thor or the Bifrost Gate that give them extraordinary capabilities far beyond anything human science can yet achieve. Soon after receiving these advancements, many groups of Martians began traveling to Earth, which they had long known harbored life, but which they had been unable to visit. The visitors were mainly divided into two camps: those interested in friendly contact with the locals, and those that were not. The first group generally took the trouble to transform into a more human form that the primitive natives would be comfortable with (though some would deliberately destroy the illusion by having an animal's head or some such signifier that they were not of this world. These Martians, and the aid that they gave to some early humans that they befriended, inspired many human religions, and it's possible to recognize many modern Martian nations as they descendants of (or given the average Martian lifespan, the actual individuals) those Martians that had visited Earth and introduced themselves as Thor, or Zeus, or Osiris, or Krishna. The Martians who were either hostile or simply uninterested in humans generally kept their true forms – huge craggy bipedal creatures in a variety of colors. These entered human mythology in the forms of giants, trolls, titans, and other enemies of the gods – a perception that was reinforced when the friendlier Martians occasionally intervened on humanity’s behalf against their less benign relatives. After many thousands of years a consensus developed among the major Martian nations (largely defined by that time as the ones with the best Kryptonian goodies) that they should leave Earth to its own devices. The softer hearts among the Martian leadership increasingly deplored the damage rogue Martians could do there, while the more practical amongst them argued that it was more difficult to control your population when they can hop to the next planet over and be a god. Over the centuries humanity's knowledge of its neighbors faded into myths and legends. Scientists only rediscovered the existence of life on mars in 1859, when the cast canal systems that crisscrossed the planet were first observed through a telescope. Further study verified that there was life and likely a civilization on our closest neighbor. However, all attempts to make contact went unanswered, and all but the most philosophically minded simply ignored that knowledge and went on with their lives. By the 1960's however, all this had begun to change. After the Challengers of the Fantastic's first thrilling (if near disastrous) space flight in 1956, the human superpowers found themselves competing to go further and further into space. Aided by the genius of their recently created 'Omega Red' Super-Spider clone, their sometimes ally Vandal von Doom, and the brilliant scientist who would one day become the Crimson Dynamo, Kerim Vanko, the Soviet Union landed Yuri Rasputin on the moon in 1961. This development left humans excited about the prospect of finally visiting the enigmatic fourth planet, and Martians realizing that if they wanted to initiate contact on their own terms, they had better do it soon. The Asgard, one of the more powerful Martian nations, dominated much of the early contact with humanity because of their control over the Bifrost Gate, which allowed far faster and easier travel throughout the solar system than the various chariots of the gods other groups used for interplanetary travel. The Asgard, along with what humans would call the Greek, Egyptian, and Hindu pantheons, were in favor of resuming peaceful contact with humanity. They were joined in this by a newer godly nation (as such things go – only a few thousand years old!) that had become a great power in the time since the previous contacts. They were opposed by a coalition of what the humans had long called 'giants,' particularly the White Martian 'Frost Giants,' and a nation of Martian Outer God worshipers led by the powerful and enigmatic Darkanos. Because of Asgard's control over early contact, a Martian named D'onn J'onzz, the heir to the throne of Asgard, was selected to go to Earth. He had been one leaders of Earth contact before relations were cut off, and had long pushed for resumption in contact. D'onn had been known to humans as Thor, god of thunder, during his time on Earth, because of his possession of a Kryptonian artifact that gave power far beyond his already impressive Martian abilities, most famously the ability to control the weather and produce lightning blasts of incredible power. Starting in 1955, when the Martians had first detected significant amounts of material being projected into Earth orbit, Thor was assigned to Earth to keep an eye on the situation. He kept a relatively low profile and learned about the vast changes that had taken place on Earth since the Martians last visited. Some aspects of human culture, like their insistence on replacing glorious individual battle (which is really a good time for everybody, particularly for super-strong aliens) with messy and destructive total wars, were disappointing, but others, like the creation of the Oreo cookie, he found quite enjoyable. Overall he quite liked these mortals, though he was eager to abandon his “Donald Jones” identity and fully reveal himself. In 1962 'Thor' burst onto the world stage. The plan had been to make contact soon any case, but his hand was forced by the arrival of his renegade adopted brother Ma'alefa'ak (known to humans as Loki) on Earth. Loki, a member of the White Martian sub-species, had been raised among the green Asgard as Thor's brother, only to betray his adopted family to his biological relations in a bid for personal power. Since that time he has been a constant thorn in the side of the Asgard, often whipping up trouble between his two families. Having largely exhausted the pool of people who would trust him as far as they could throw him on his own planet, Loki came to Earth to try his luck at being a god. His initial plot involved provoking the Green Hulk into a deadly rampage in New York City, forcing Thor to intervene to protect the locals. The immediate situation was soon resolved with the help of the newly formed S.H.I.E.L.D. under the command of Nick Gordon, and the further action necessary to defeat Loki had the fortuitous consequence of leading to the initial formation of the League of Avengers (founding members: Thor, Green Hulk, Super-Spider, Iron-Bat, American Wonder). However, after the excitement wore off the cat was well and truly out of the bag. Not only was Mars inhabited, but they were here right now. The primary policy consequence of this knowledge was to drive the space race to unprecedented heights. By 1965 the first primitive Soviet interplanetary ship landed on Mars, followed only a few months later by an American expedition. Despite occasional troublemakers on both sides, early contact between the two worlds went surprisingly well. With both Mars and Earth divided into competing power blocks, no one wanted to provoke serious hostilities for fear of being weakened in the effort and being attacked by their rivals at home. Human scientists and historians gaped at the Mars's Kryptonian artifacts and historical databases going back since before the dawn of human civilizations (study of the Bifrost gate led to the launch of humanity's first, and thus far only, interstellar expedition to Alpha Centauri in 1969), while Martians began traveling to Earth (largely incognito) and sampling the fantastic new cultures that had flourished since they were there last. Thor, finding that he quite enjoyed the super-heroing lifestyle, stayed on Earth as the planet's ambassador, which generally involved slipping in a press conference or meeting at the UN when he had time between battles with super-villains alongside the League. Unbeknownst to most, in these days Earth gained a second permanent Martian resident. M'Gann G'Ray was a White Martian orphan raised among the Green Martians of Asgard. Due to Martians' superior senses and frequent telepathic powers, it was impossible for even a shape-shifter to pretend to be something other than she was on Mars. Fearing that M'Gann would suffer the same fate as his brother, Thor took a particular interest in her development, and eventually agreed that spending time among the humans on Earth would be good for her (Socially isolated as she was, M'Gann had developed quite the taste for the human television beginning to circulate through Asgard). After all, humans would simply see M'Gann as a mysterious alien, or even as a human if she chose to appear that way. In 1963 M'Gann arrived on Earth, took the name Megan Grey, and went to stay in the Wayne mansion, where Charles Xavier (already uploaded into Cerebro by this time) was building up his team of young super-people. M'Gann, a powerful telepath and telekinetic, was soon dubbed Miss Marvel by her teammates, and eventually began a relationship with her fellow non-human on the team: Scott Kent. In 1981 the US launched the first of a small fleet of reusable interplanetary shuttles designed to ferry people and cargo between Earth and Mars. Between these ships and their Martian equivalents (generally in the form of some seemingly horse drawn chariot that's really an ancient alien artifact) contact between Earth and Mars became relatively routine – if still enormously expensive. The two worlds would not always see eye to eye, but they remained fundamentally on the same side in their joint attempt to navigate a dangerous and often threatening universe.